Singapore Healthcare Health
Executive Summary
In this report, we will be discussing the healthcare industry in Singapore and introducing the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system; that is being implemented for the “IngoT” project targeted for the non-profit organizations largely funded by Lien Foundation to increase their productivity. We will also identify the problems in finance, human resource, data, inventory, clinical and donors management in the industry.
Introduction on Singapore Healthcare System
Singapore healthcare has an efficient and widespread system which is mainly under the responsibility of the government's Ministry of Health (MOH) having the mission to promote health, prevent and reduce illness, and to ensure that Singaporeans have access to good and affordable healthcare. According to an analysis by global consulting from Watson Wyatt, it is said that Singapore has one of the most successful and advanced healthcare systems in the world, in terms of both efficiency in financing and the results achieved in community health outcomes. With facing to the new dynamic generation, Singapore now is a highly privatized universal health care system with an emphasis on individual fiscal responsibility.
Universal healthcare system which is the public healthcare; offer primary healthcare that operate under the government that provides a significant part of funding required in healthcare services and health education. Examples of public health care provider are the National Health Group (NHG) and SingHealth Group which delivers quality medical expertise and facilities. They are committed through an incorporate network of primary healthcare polyclinics, acute care hospitals, national specialty centres and innovative virtual specialty centres.
As for private healthcare, it is made up of private practitioners' and non-profit healthcare provider. Private practitioners provide healthcare services to Singaporean through their own clinics and healthcare centre. Where on the other side, Non-profit healthcare provider performs and operates voluntary welfare in achieving its social mission and social outcomes. They provide services like medical, paramedical services and elderly nursing. Most of the non-profit organizations are members of the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) which follow the code of conduct set by Charity Council.
With the facing of ageing population, economic downturns and inflation; non-profit healthcare organization play an important part by providing affordable and even free medical and primary healthcare services to the seniors and the low-income. Thus with the importance of these non-profit organizations in Singapore healthcare system, the “IngoT” project is being introduced and largely funded by Lien Foundation to have the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system across the non-profit organizations to manage the resources to increase the productivity and efficiency.
Background Information of Lien Foundation
Lien Foundation is the first to set up new grounds in philanthropy by forging strategic partnerships and catalyzing action on social and environmental challenges. Their model of philanthropy goes beyond the traditional role of donor-sponsor and to make a difference by seeking out and addressing the root cause of problems. They take a radical approach and invest in innovative solutions, often challenging existing conventions. The Foundation also seeks to enhance educational opportunities for the disadvantaged, spearhead the development of nascent fields of studies, champion excellence in eldercare and promote environmental sustainability in water and sanitation.
Background Information of ERP
History Outline of ERP:
- 1960s: Inventory Control: Traditional way in managing inventory items.
- 1970s: Material Requirement Planning (MPR): Using computers: especially Mainframes for planning and procurement of materials (Delivery schedules)
- 1980s: MRP-II: Focus in the entire manufacturing process that involved the material, financial and human aspects
- 1990s: Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP): Enhanced system of MRP-II
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an enhanced system of MRP-II that is developed by Pulse Sync. ERP is a system that collaborates multiple computer systems from various business functions into a single unified system that store the information or data in a common database.
The huge difference between the MRP and ERP is that MRP system is developed mainly to facilitate the operations in the manufacturing and service of business functions. However, ERP system is developed to facilitate operations in all other business functions like Human Resource, Finance, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management etc.
The main key feature in ERP is cross-functional integration where unified database is formed that easily allows sharing of data or information among various business functions, that various business functions can have a better overview and understanding of the overall business operation within the organization.
Moreover, communication is easier that people in various business functions can cooperate with one another better, this result in the smooth flowing of the business operations.
In the current market, the most common vendors for ERP system are SAP, Oracle Corporation and PeopleSoft etc. All these vendors play important role in developing and enhancing ERP applications to tailored to multiple different industries and company and showing the importance and effectiveness of ERP system.
Challenges faced in Singapore Healthcare
In order to increase productivity and efficiency, we have to identify the operations problems faced by Singapore healthcare industry as well as the areas of improvement. Below we will share some of the typical ineffective functions in the industry.
Financial Management:
The ineffective cost control was one of the problems caused when the staff's needs and benefits have to be taken care of. With this factor alone, it has already taken up the main focus on financial issues. While standard rises in the area of healthcare industry, the workforce expenses still take up most of the operational cost. Thus, finding a balance in financial issues will get harder since most of the funds were used to cover up for the workforce expenses, which in terms mean that lesser funds could be used to improve the security, the standard of the equipment ,and the type of communication between hospital.
Human resource: The shortage of healthcare personnel is another problem that requires great concern as more funds are needed for staff utilizations as well as paying overtimes. In other words, the shortage of healthcare personnel could further aggravate the situation and therefore, causing effective cost control harder to be implied.
With the shortages in staff and lack in skills, demands of higher quality patient-care could not be met and this was presented as a serious problem. More funds and staff will be needed to meet the requirement, and if there were not enough manpower and/or equipments to deliver satisfactory services, it may also cause a huge disadvantage as competitions were increasing. Thus keeping the demands in check is essential for the healthcare industry.
Data Management:
In the current situation, data of medical records is in paper form and it took a lot of time and effort to look for particular patient information. Furthermore, staffs have to be sent to and forth between hospitals if they needed information of the patients from other hospitals. This is due to the information databases between hospitals were not linked to each others, hence, sharing of information was not as effective.
Leakage of private information may be possible. When sharing of information were time consuming and ineffective, there will be a high possibility of private information leaking due to higher exposure, which may in term leads to the destruction of the organization's reputation.
Inventory management: Inventory management was not efficient when the staffs were unclear about the proper time of receiving the medical supply due to the poor communication among the staffs and inconsistency of information. One example is that the staff was not informed if there were a sudden delay of the medical supply, and this could cause chaos within the medical centres.
Another example will be the staffs not sure about how much medical supply should be in reserve and/or how much of them should be allocated for operations. They needed to depend on other departments to receive the information. Even after receiving the required information, keeping the supply in check was still a hard thing to do.
Communication between various departments was important as before there were any technological/proper means of communication between individual departments, there were lot of chaos and confusion with regards to the goods and raw materials.
Clinical management: Clinical management is a process that comprises of many departments such as managing the finances, inventory, administrations and amounts of medical supply to be ordered. Clinical management also involves communication among the staff. Thus, the organization must take the initiative to teach the staff about effective ways of managing their various departments by providing them with courses or training in order to improve the quality of their service.
In the healthcare industry, if the managing system of the hospital is not that efficient, problem such as letting too many patient wait for a ward, not enough beds of patient, poor administrative process which makes information harder to locate may occur due to the high percentage of people who goes day in day out of the hospital daily. Thus, in order for a hospital to work efficiently to meet the requirement of the patients, good clinical management must be implied for greater efficiency.
Donor management:
Lastly is the managing of the donor's data. Having donors is a very important factor for a non-profit healthcare organization to keep the organization running. Without a proper system to manage the information of the donors, keeping the information in check will be a hard thing to do. Needless to say, building up relationship with the donor will be even more difficult. Thus, having a more efficient system for storing, organizing and viewing donor's information is very critical.
Conclusion
In this introductory report, we have given a general introduction on Singapore healthcare industry as well as introduce the ERP system. We also identified some of the problems in Singapore healthcare system especially in the case of non-profit healthcare provider. Thus in the next final report, we will give a more detailed analysis in regard to the case study and to discuss more about how ERP can solve the problems stated above.
References
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